Yosemite park's return from housekeeping hell

Shirley Streshinsky, SPECIAL TO THE EXAMINER

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, November 16, 1997

1997-11-16 04:00:00 PDT CALIFORNIA -- YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK - On a recent clear and quiet fall morning, smoke was smoldering on the forest floor from the carefully controlled fires that rangers had set in Yosemite's Mariposa Grove.

Without the fire, the tiny seeds of the giant Sequoias - the largest living things on earth - will not germinate and grow. Ranger Kristine Hutchinson explained this to us on a leisurely walking tour of the grove. Fire and flood, she said, are two of nature's most effective housekeeping devices.

A recent trip provided a look at how Yosemite is recovering from nature's latest cleaning binge, plus a glimpse of what life might be like when cars are banned in the valley of California's premier national park.

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For generations of northern Californians, Yosemite has been the classic weekend escape - in the spring and summer to the valley, to hike the trail to Vernal Falls or sit in the meadow with binoculars watching climbers make their way up the face of El Capitan; in the winter to ski at Badger Pass or go cross-country to Glacier Point.

In the first three days of 1997, what was called "the flood of the century" washed through Yosemite and into its valley, inundating campgrounds, washing away trails, destroying 350 motel units and cabins, drowning the entire fleet of tour trams in 10 feet of water and generally creating havoc.

By September, when we decided to make our pilgrimage, only a few reminders of the flood were apparent - tall red and white signs that showed the height of the flood waters, a pile of ruined tent cabins and occasional ribbons marking off restoration sites.

We discovered that almost all of the trails and bridges in Yosemite Valley had been restored, though stables in the valley and at Wawona remained closed for the season (and may not open again next year, for reasons having more to do with liability and safety concerns).

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All of the old bike paths were back in service and new ones added - not only for bikes, but for wheelchairs as well. Except for a few trails in the high country, hikers found things much as they were before the floods - and often better, with all the repair work.

The success of the flood repairs was crowned with the opening of a bright new facility at Glacier Pass in September, including a new $2.7 million lodge that will serve as a store in the summer, when throngs make the long drive up for the astonishing views, and as an overnight ski hut in the winter, when snow closes the road.

The Badger Pass ski area, closed for most of last year's ski season, is expected to open on Thanksgiving and then on weekends until Dec. 19, when it will shift into full operation.

Some effects of of the flood do not become apparent until you ask for a room. Yosemite Lodge lost 246 rooms and cabins, all in the budget category. These were the foundation of a popular family ski program, where $66 could get a family of four a cabin with bath and free lift tickets.

The flood did more than wash some of mankind's presence out of Yosemite Valley - it also helped generate the momentum for park officials to move ahead on plans long stalled for political and economic reasons.

One was last summer's controversial proposal to require reservations for day-use visitors. This set up such a hue and cry from tour operators and businesses in the gateway communities around the park entrances that the National Park Service backed down. According to spokesman Kendall Thompson, the NPS's first priority is to reconstruct the campgrounds that were destroyed by the flood. He said the reservation plan and other transportation issues are now

"on the back burner," where it looks as if they will simmer for at least another three years.

Last week, the NPS announced a plan to ban most private cars from the valley by the year 2001. In what park Superintendent Stanley Albright called "... a comprehensive blueprint for reducing traffic, restoring natural resources within the valley and improving visitor facilities and services," the plan gives the Yosemite Area Regional Transportation Strategy (YARTS) three years to create a new transit system able to carry as many as 2.3 million people each year from staging areas outside of the park to the valley shuttle buses.

If YARTS (which itself is in an embryonic stage) doesn't get it together, the park service says it will build a parking lot for 1,800 cars, either at the Taft Toe in Yosemite Valley near El Capitan or near the Pohono Quarry. Only people with reservations at hotels or campsites within the park will be allowed to drive into the valley; once in, they will be required to park their cars and, like everybody else, make their way around by foot, bicycle or tram.

This was not happy news to the gateway communities just outside the park, such as El Portal and Fish Camp, which expect to house large numbers of visitors who cannot or choose not to stay inside Yosemite.

These gateway communities have changed dramatically in the last decade, with rustic little motels and mom-and-pop clusters of cabins being joined by more 90s-style inventions, such as Tenaya Lodge, where we stayed. This full-scale, upscale resort hotel sprawls over 35 manicured acres at Fish Camp, near the southern entrance to Yosemite.

No cold water or shared bathrooms here, but full spa services (a favorite is the enzymatic sea mud pack treatment) exercise rooms, indoor and outdoor pools, and a chef de cuisine adept at creating entrees such as sauteed quail breast and ballottine filled with fois gras served over a bed of wilted endive and accented with grapes and raspberry glaze. John Muir, who used to subsist on stale bread and tea, could never have imagined.

The reservation plan proposed by the park service is a touchy subject in the gateway communities, whose economic health depends on the park. Tenaya Manager Paul Ratchford was speaking for many of the businesses in the area when he told us: "We support the need for a vehicle reduction, but not a forced reduction."

He said he feels the NPS' current practice of closing the park when it reaches a visitor saturation level - which happens a few times each summer - works just fine.

Ratchford, who has 244 rooms to fill year round, sees spreading visitation over the year as part of the solution. To encourage winter guests, Tenaya arranges skiing lessons and equipment rentals, ice skating, snowshoeing and holiday sleigh rides, and offers a room rate that dips to $69 a night for winter weekdays through April 4.

The resort teams up with Yosemite Tours, run by Bob and DeeAnn Smith, to get guests out of their cars and onto little buses for full-day tours of Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point and the Mariposa Grove, as well as to Bass Lake, outside the park.

"My Dad used to come to Bass Lake back in the '70s, when almost nobody knew about it," the garrulous Smith told us as we bounced around the lake on a quiet September afternoon.

Rimmed on one side by national forest and the other by lodges, Bass Lake is a mecca for water sports. South and east is the Ansel Adams Wilderness, north is the Emigrant Wilderness and the Toiyabe National Forest. As Smith pointed out to us, there is plenty of wilderness to explore outside the park boundaries.

There are 120 parking spaces in the Mariposa Grove. Once the lot is full, cars are diverted to another area near Wawona for free shuttle transfer to the grove. We arrived early in the morning to get one of the coveted parking spaces.

Our choice was to walk the 2-1/4-mile roadway through the giant Sequoias, or buy a ticket on the tram. We decided to ride up the hill and walk down, which turned out to be an excellent decision, considering the fine historical narration given by a volunteer who has seen a half century of change in the park.

When we disembarked up top, we happened onto Ranger Kristine Hutchinson, whose duty that day was to wander through the grove, answering questions and delivering impromptu lectures on the natural history of the park. We fell in with her, and others joined us along the paths, which seemed all but empty and quiet - though the parking lot had long since filled and visitors were being ferried into the grove from the Wawona staging area. People without their cars, it seemed to us, could more easily be absorbed into this forest primeval.

Hutchinson, chatting along with ease about anything to do with the grove, told us that European visitors tell her how astonished they are by the stand of old-growth trees - and especially that we have been able to save them. We shouldn't forget our triumphs, she intimated.

Berkeley-based Shirley Streshinsky most recently wrote for the Travel Section about St. Louis.&lt;

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